Chapter 3. Getting Started With DDRescue-GUI

Abstract

This chapter covers the basic functionality you'll need to use in DDRescue-GUI. It's intended to be just enough for you to get started using DDRescue-GUI.

Table of Contents

The Main Window
Setting up for your recovery.
Start your recovery
Finishing your recovery

The Main Window

That was quite a lot of introduction material there. Now we'll get started with using the GUI. Firstly, here's the main window:

Figure 3.1. DDRescue-GUI's Main Window (Linux)

DDRescue-GUI's Main Window (Linux)


Figure 3.2. DDRescue-GUI's Main Window (Windows)

DDRescue-GUI's Main Window (Windows)


Figure 3.3. DDRescue-GUI's Main Window (Mac)

DDRescue-GUI's Main Window (Mac)


[Caution]Caution

If you're using a version of ddrescue I don't support, you'll get a warning at this point. If you see the warning, check you're running the latest version of DDRescue-GUI. The GUI may still run, but you may also encounter errors or formatting issues.

This window is displayed after DDRescue-GUI has finished starting up. There are 3 main things you need to set here. The "Image Source" is the damaged drive. The map file is optional, and used to resume where you left off if you don't want to recover all the data at once. If you set the map file, make sure you put it on a third drive (perhaps a USB stick or another hard drive) for safety.

[Tip]Tip

It's highly recommended that you use a map file. It only takes a few seconds to set up, and it means that you can stop and start the recovery as you please. It also allows you to resume your recovery if, say, there's a power outage, or your computer crashes. If that happened and you didn't use a map file you would probably have to start from the start!

Finally, you have the "Image Destination", which is where you want to recover your data to. This can be another device, or an image file. It's a good idea to go with an image file like "recovery.img". Put it in a convenient place so you don't lose it, and make sure you have enough disk space first.

[Caution]Caution

Windows users: Navigate to /cygdrive/c/Users/yourusername to save on your desktop. If you selected one of the folders in the sidebar and can't find your file, you can probably find it under "C:\Program Files\DDRescue-GUI\home"

I am aware of this issue and will fix it soon in an update to the Windows version of DDRescue-GUI to make this easier.

You might have noticed the "Detailed Info" pull-down. That's use to show you more information about what's happening during your recovery. If you click on it, you'll see this:

Figure 3.4. Detailed info in DDRescue-GUI

Detailed info in DDRescue-GUI


When you're doing a recovery this section will have lots of information, like this:

Figure 3.5. Detailed info in action in DDRescue-GUI

Detailed info in action in DDRescue-GUI


The next helpful thing on this window is the button called "Disk Information". This contains all the the disk information I mentioned earlier, and it's very helpful when you're trying to match device names to disks. Here are two examples of how to use it, one with Linux and one with macOS:

Figure 3.6. Disk info in DDRescue-GUI (Linux)

Disk info in DDRescue-GUI (Linux)


In this example, you can see in the screen-shot that I have a device whose model is "Samsung SSD 850", and because I have that in a table with device names, I now know that my SSD's name is "/dev/sda".

On Windows, the information is currently quite limited, but is enough for you to be able to relate Linux disk names to drive letters.

Figure 3.7. Disk info in DDRescue-GUI (Windows)

Disk info in DDRescue-GUI (Windows)


Here you can see my VirtualBox hard disk, and that the C: drive on it corresponds to the name /dev/sda4. You can also see drives D: and F:, which correspond to the DVD drive and a USB drive, but disk information is not yet complete for those devices.

And now for the Mac example:

Figure 3.8. Disk info in DDRescue-GUI (Mac)

Disk info in DDRescue-GUI (Mac)


In this example, you can see that there's a virtualbox hard disk with name /dev/disk0, and it has three partitions: /dev/disk0s1, /dev/disk0s2, and /dev/disk0s3. Note that the description field shows that it's an internal hard disk drive as well.

So if you were starting a recovery, you'd select the image source, map file, and image destination. You also need to pick some more settings before you can start your recovery though, and these are on the settings window.

[Tip]Tip

If you accidentally click "Start" now, don't worry, because the GUI will prompt you to take a look at the settings first. This is designed to stop you from making mistakes and losing data.

[Tip]Tip

On Windows, you can look in the description column to find the drive letter that corresponds to the Linux-style device name. Make and model information may also be available for some drives, and I aim to improve the make and model detection in future reeleases for Windows.